


Dandelion Wine

by bonibaru



Category: Smallville
Genre: Angst, Gen, Nostalgia
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-12-06
Updated: 2017-12-06
Packaged: 2019-02-11 05:53:42
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 509
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12928905
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bonibaru/pseuds/bonibaru
Summary: Snapshot of a girl left behind.





	Dandelion Wine

**Author's Note:**

> Written for the Ray Bradbury title challenge.

Sitting on a porch swing breathing in the scent of apple blossoms, Lana is a living anachronism. A caricature of small town summer interludes from days gone by. The tickle at the back of her neck could be just from her hair, or ghostly fairy wings ruffled by the breeze. The feeling is indistinguishable, sometimes.

The hum of bees in the apple trees is diminished from a week ago; spring is melting away as summer comes on slow. Before she knows it, there will be apples ripe enough for pies and cider and dandelion wine simmering in Nell's kitchen.

Nell says it's a family tradition handed down from Lana's grandmother and her grandmother before that. Lana takes Nell's word for it, because there isn't anyone else to ask.

Whitney never wanted to taste the wine. He said nothing good could come from common weeds. But Lana likes the sweetness and the sparkle, that little surprise of flavor locked tight in a tenacious yellow flower.

Lana remembers days and days of wishes blown into the summer wind. Self-propelled dandelion seeds tossing gently along the road carrying her dreams on their feathery crowns. She supposes that they must have put down roots in distant places. They certainly never came back.

Nell says that in winemaking, patience is the highest virtue. For two months the wine jars will sit and ferment, milky golden and sweet- smelling, until the day comes when they suddenly fall clear. Lana has only been lucky enough to see this happen in real time once in all the years, the process of settling, pigments and yeast sinking to the bottom leaving behind a startling clarity that Lana envies.

Whitney found clarity in a dusty box of war medals. Lana tried to find it in her mission to save the Talon, but what she discovered was a lot of hard work and frustration that maybe hasn’t been worth the preservation of sentimentality.

Almost.

Nell says, to kill a dandelion, you have to rip it out by its roots. Lana's roots are deep, deep in the tainted soil of this town, wrapped around her dead parents and pinned under a chunk of unearthly green stone infinitely larger than the one Whitney carried away in his pocket.

She envies him. At least he has an objective, a mission. Whitney ripped himself out of Smallville and set off down the dusty road, spurred on by the desire to be something more than he had been. It wasn't enough for him to be Whitney Fordman, small town champion, devoted son.

It wasn't enough for him to be hers.

Beyond the safeguarding of the Talon, Lana doesn't feel a larger purpose. Whitney's absence has left an empty space inside that she hasn’t been able to fill by herself. Being the fairy princess without a prince doesn't feel much like royalty at all.

The distant roof of the Kent's barn shimmers in the rising heat. She thinks about a sunset that never was.

Lana's roots dig down deeper into the earth. She isn't going anywhere.


End file.
